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The "French Raymond Chandler" is back with this story of an assassination gone wrong and a manic, murderous cross-country road trip. “For Manchette … the crime novel is no mere entertainment, but a means to strip bare the failures of society, ripping through veils of appearance, deceit, and manipulation to the greed and violence that are the society's true engines.”—James Sallis, The Boston Globe
Contributors:
James Sallis
,
Donald Nicholson-Smith

Though a family man and a reasonably successful doctor, Charles Alavoine has grown dissatisfied with his existence. A casual liaison seems to promise the release he longs for, but its consequences are far deadlier than he’d anticipated. Simenon’s thriller is at once a personal confession and an indictment of modern society’s deadening moral codes.
Contributors:
Roger Ebert
,
Louise Varèse

J.P. Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale, we watch with alternating horror and fascination as the deadly Aimée drifts into a sleepy provincial town, poised to make a killing.
Contributors:
Jean Echenoz
,
Donald Nicholson-Smith

Simenon's longest and most personal novel: “Simenon brings to life in Pedigree the whole sensory world of his childhood in Liège. His words capture the sounds, sights, tastes, smells, and textures of the city… Simenon does for Liège what the young Joyce did for Dublin: he evokes the city with such immediacy that we feel we've walked in its streets.” —Lucille Frackman Becker
Contributors:
Luc Sante
,
Robert Baldick

Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek— the object of the voyeuristic crowd's gleeful disgust—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There's no way that anything like that will ever happen to him.
Contributors:
Nick Tosches

Two outcasts, a widow and a recently released murderer, become involved in a love triangle with the girl next door. Published in the same year and often compared to The Stranger, The Widow is one of Simenon's most powerful and disturbing romans durs.
Contributors:
Paul Theroux
,
John Petrie

Luc Sante has selected the best of anarchist and art critic Fénéon's vignettes of the darker side of life—adultery, murder, revenge, labor unrest, and suicide—in early-20th-century France. —Illustrated
Contributors:
Luc Sante

How different are the cautious routines of ordinary life from the compulsions of a killer? How reliable is even the most reliable man's identity? What finally is the truth about a person?
Contributors:
Luc Sante
,
Marc Romano